"The movements are angular, unnaturally decelerated, then the dancers freeze in cramped poses, knees and arms bent. The piece is brittle and hermetic, but a fascination develops nonetheless. You focus on tiny changes, observe how the atmosphere changes, follow the meditative movement sequences, accompanied by recorded sounds. Hay creates universal moments, for example when a dancer silently cries and the others try to comfort him, or when a man and a woman hug each other and become knotted, their togetherness becoming cramped." Marion Meyer, Rheinische Post, 27/3/2017

"Tenacity of Space is a performance that is uneventful yet stirring, rich in movement yet still, tackles association and isolation at one and the same time. The piece emphasises these contrasts, develops them then dissolves everything again, until the parts give rise to a whole. But you can only understand this whole if you appreciate the dance's own language: the five dancers of the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE speak above all using the limbs of their bodies and thereby open up their own perspectives that need no words." Katharina Tiemann, tanzhaus nrw blog, 10/4/2017

MAN MADE

"At the end, all five dancers in Jan Martens' premiere Man Made rotate to hypnotic electronic music in a growing, fascinating frenzy of dance. Experience and quality involve each other â€“ even and precisely in dance." Annette Stiekele, Hamburger Abendblatt, 13/3/2017

"Here, too, the dance manages at the start without any music at all; only the dancers' rhythmic foot movements can be heard. Each one shapes his or her own part with new individual patterns emerging time and again before dissolving imperceptibly into synchronicity, everyone doing the same thing together, then landing immediately back in separation again. At a certain point, a distant beat starts, rising gradually and mixing with other sounds (sound: Mattef Kuhlmey). In parallel with the increasing and decreasing intensity of light (lighting: Dominique Pollet) and the dynamic of the movements performed by the ensemble in simple black dancewear (costumes: Sophia Piepenbrock-Saitz), a hypnotic whole emerges that increasingly mixes and interweaves until the crescendo finally leads into fortissimo and the music stops suddenly, the dancers continuing to move in unison until the movement also reduces and dies away. Once again, we can see here that dancers aged over 40 bring precisely the degree of intensity and confidence to the stage that you'd like to see in every dance performance, the technique and agility of all these dancers also making a mockery of their age. One can only hope and wish that this ensemble continues for a long time yet, and that it may even get bigger." Annette Bopp, tanznetz.de, 13/3/2017

CATALOGUE (FIRST EDITION)

"The game they are playing amidst the silence appears effortless: hands touch four points, hip, hip, shoulder, shoulder. They perform the same movements, but not identically. One of them slows down, the other follows with a delay. Slowly, the hands move higher, torso and head become more articulated – all the while following the precise set of patterns introduced early on. A series of repetitions and variations unfolds, where it seems as if the dancers were offering each other a pulse or rhythm. […] It is a delightful duet, celebrating togetherness and a shared sense of doing." Melanie Suchy, tanz, November 2016

"William Forsythe, the grand master of choreography, demonstrates in his duet Catalogue how time and space are defined by movement – entirely independently of age. (...) Looking at each other, [the two dancers] slow down their inner rhythm or give new impetus to the perpetuum mobile. And in the process, something remarkable happens: time ceases to pass inexorably but is instead generated by the bodies themselves. The dancers seem ageless. Hopefully the company that wants to ‘dance on’ will produce many more pieces like this." Antje Landmann, Die Rheinpfalz, 10.10.2016

"Stunning technique meets the creativity and composure of experienced dancers. When their hands touched at the end of this wonderful piece, they seemed to become part of one continuous artistic cycle." Natalie Kurth, SWR 2, 08.10.2016

tanz Yearbook 2016 - critic`s survey

"Company of the year: Dance On (Water between three hands)" Dorion Weickmann, in: tanz Jahrbuch 2016

Jone San Martin speaks – it is part of her dancing. […] The fifty-year-old wants dancers to be valued: There is nothing embarrassing or inferior about performing other people’s choreography. […]
Jone San Martin now belongs to the newly founded DANCE ON ENSEMBLE and, in its first piece 7 Dialogues, bewitched the audience with her expressive gaze and fingers. Just like her colleagues Amancio Gonzalez, Christopher Roman, Ty Boomershine, Ami Shulman and Brit Rodemund, she delivered a performance that gives us hope: strong individuals, experienced artists, all of them. […]
Good, to have someone like Jone San Martin sticking up for just dancing – for being a dancer.Melanie Suchy, "Jone San Martin", in: tanz Jahrbuch 2016

WATER BETWEEN THREE HANDS

“Water between three hands sees the body as a surrealist object and pays homage to it through language and movement. Chambers of spooks and wonder under the skin are depicted in nightmarish passages about transience, remembrance, distortion and the alienation of perception. (...) A whiff of New York drifts from the stage and William Forsythe’s experimental academism resonates, like a matrix archived in the arms and legs of his ex-protagonists, activated by the percussionist Philipp Danzeisen, the dancers’ adversary and associate. And they deliver (...) a magnificent batch of goods.”Dorion Weickmann, “Prototype on twelve legs”, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung online, 25/4/2016

“The formulation ‘three hands’ points to the fact that here a group is embarking on an experiential journey together. The dancers shuttle between the microphone and dance area. (...) In the artistic exchange, percussionist Philipp Danzeisen is also included in the performance. Not least the audience, the addressee of scenes about age and parting, reality and reflection, scenes in which it also thinks along, plays its traditional key role in a Mroué work. Fortunately, there’s plenty of room for laughter, about amusing pointers, self-mocking tales of woe, and poses. But above all it is the cluster of individuals still dancing so exquisitely that makes this 75-minute dance piece so captivating.” Marieluise Jeitschko, tanznetz.de, 26/4/ 2016

“Dancers aged over 40 as the protagonists in a piece? Nothing new, yet not self-evident. (…) The pilot project Dance On: Dance Repertoire for Dancers 40+ gains enormous strength from this knowledge. Water Between Three Hands is the name of the second production by the Dance on Ensemble, three women and three men in a choreography by the Lebanese director and actor Rabih Mroué and premiering at Kampnagel. Helped by his sextet, Mroué, close to visual art, a novice dance creator, wrote a notebook in which everything is held together, from the working method to things that affect the dancers, be they nightmarish, bizarre, moving or funny. From the archive of their memories and bodies, they have developed a seemingly improvised collage-style lesson that initially comes across as cryptic pathology. The marvellous dancers dismantle their bodies, so to speak, and put them together at the end as a concentrated snapshot of dance. ‘Every time we say goodbye,’ sings Ella Fitzgerald, but it looks as if these dancers won’t be saying goodbye for a long time yet.” Monika Nelissen, “The dance of age can be a lively affair”, Die Welt online, 25/4/2016

“The main threads of the piece are the body, death and therefore also war. Water between three hands has no daring springs or youthful fragile beauty, yet Rabih Mroué has nonetheless created touching, thought-provoking moments with the dancers. (...) The production offers plenty of space for individual interpretations, something we’re used to from dance theatre. This is nice and allows the evening to echo in the mind. Something unusual: the dancers are given a voice, are allowed to articulate what age is doing with them. Intimate insights for dance enthusiasts.” Thorsten Schaubrenner, “Water between three hands”, 3SAT, Kulturzeit, 25/4/2016

7 DIALOGUES

There was “(...) a reunion with the one-time Forsythe dancers Jone San Martin, Amancio Gonzalez and Christopher Roman: they’re now members of Dance On, a company that (...) aims to explore how the experience of dancers aged over 40 on stage can be used by other artists and even in everyday projects. The snapshots of these magnificent dancers were a pleasure to watch, what they’re developing something worth talking about.” Eva-Maria Magel, “See you in Essen. What’s on offer: German Dance Platform 2016”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7/3/2016

“If you look at it close up, it becomes clear that this is less about validating tedious clichés. These say – in contrast to the rampant obsession with youth – that dancers beyond the age of 40 are still great on stage because older people are incredibly expressive. No, this is far more about the essential question of what a dancer is today, what he or she can be, is allowed to be, should be.” Melanie Suchy, Tanz, March 2016

“All the dancers have (...) brilliant technique, body control and charisma – there’s no doubt there. Pantomime and language enhanced and underlined movement. The motivations for continuing to dance are interwoven with sarcastic winks (...) But above all the barely eight-minute performances from each dancer reveal artistic emphasis and personality.” Marieluise Jeitschko, “The Dance On Ensemble introduces itself with ‘7 Dialogues’ at the Holland Dance Festival”, in: tanznetz.de, 30/1/2016